Bloomberg's game change

Bloomberg Media wants to be a dominant player in political news. In order to make that happen, the New York powers have wrested control of the steering wheel from Washington.

On Wednesday night, Al Hunt, the face of Bloomberg’s political coverage for nearly a decade, was informed by Senior Executive Editor Josh Tyrangiel that his weekly public affairs show “Political Capital” would be canceled. The show’s production team would be laid off, as would many of the veteran print journalists Hunt had brought on board over the years. Those jobs would be moving to New York, where Bloomberg is already hard at work on a new show.

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Bloomberg had recruited Hunt, a highly respected veteran, to demonstrate the company’s commitment to building an influential presence in Washington. Now, however, Bloomberg is moving aggressively to centralize its political efforts in New York, which is creating anxiety among many in the Washington bureau.

In October, Bloomberg will launch “Bloomberg Politics,” a website and daily television show anchored by “Game Change” co-authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. “Politics” will be broadcast from Bloomberg’s New York headquarters, run by New York-based producers and editors, and overseen by Bloomberg’s New York-based leadership. The Washington bureau will have no editorial control over its content.

“The whole thing will be run out of New York,” one Bloomberg insider said. “They consider Washington a backwater.”

In a statement, Bloomberg Media spokeswoman Amanda Cowie said the decision to cancel Hunt’s program and lay off staff did not reflect a change in Bloomberg’s commitment to the nation’s capital.

“We have 150 people in our Washington news operation, one of the largest in the country. That isn’t changing and our presence and reporting capabilities in D.C. will continue to be second to none,” Cowie said. “We are airing the new television program out of New York, so the production and operations teams will now be in New York.”

Bloomberg is consolidating efforts across the map: It is eliminating its television staff in Los Angeles and focusing West Coast efforts in San Francisco, as well as moving New York-based staff on its European programming to London.

Nevertheless, the decision to center political operations in New York has left Washington employees feeling spurned. Just days before news of the Halperin-Heilemann project broke in May, Bloomberg named a new Washington managing editor (Craig Gordon) and bureau chief (Jonathan Allen), both formerly of POLITICO, — two positions that seemed to involve a great deal of responsibility for the site’s political coverage during the 2014 midterms and the 2016 presidential elections. Gordon and Allen will have little influence over “Bloomberg Politics,” which promises to be the organization’s chief politics destination.

The transfer of power marks the end of an era for Bloomberg, which has spent more than a decade investing considerably in a Washington-based political operation. Bloomberg’s Washington reporters operate out of a sleek office one block from the White House that has long been the envy of journalists at competing news organizations. The bureau’s television studio offers a clear shot of the Treasury Department, while fresh fruit and other treats are available for reporters one floor above.